20 May 2011

A Girl Scout Cookie controversy

This time it relates to the presence of palm oil and the risk palm oil poses to rain forests.  Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal:
Girl Scouts have been selling cookies since 1917. Today, all 16 varieties contain palm oil. Last year, troops sold $714 million worth of cookies, most of which goes to the nonprofit councils under which troops are organized.

Cookie dough has come under heat before. Until 2006, the cookies contained partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, but the scouts switched to palm oil so the cookies would be free of trans fat.

Hoping to help orangutans, the Michigan teens want the Scouts to either remove palm oil entirely from cookies, or use sustainably grown palm oil.

But bakers say there isn't enough. "Only about 6% of today's global supply of palm oil is sustainably grown," says Kris Charles, a spokeswoman for Kellogg Co., whose Little Brownie Bakers division is one of two makers of Girl Scout cookies...
More details at the link.

4 comments:

  1. Huh. I'd always thought the point of Girl Scout cookies was that the girls had baked them. Turns out they're just acting as high-commission sales reps for a couple of bakeries?

    ReplyDelete
  2. ...for decades, yes.

    They're also a really cheap, artificial product. I'd consider buying them if they were all-natural. I can get a better cookie for cheaper without dealing with a brat.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anon, you're apparently new to this blog. I delete all comments that contain personal attacks against other commenters.

    Feel free to repeat the comment without the insult.

    ReplyDelete

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